Misery Loves Company ~ Reviewed

Misery Loves Company

By Rene Gutteridge

Published by Tyndall

368 Pages

Back Cover:

Don’t tell me it’s terrifying. Terrify me.
Filled with grief, Jules Belleno rarely leaves the house since her husband’s death while on duty as a police officer. Other than the reviews Jules writes on her blog, she has little contact with the outside world.

But one day when she ventures out to the local grocery store, Jules bumps into a fellow customer . . . and recognizes him as her favorite author, Patrick Reagan. Jules gushes and thoroughly embarrasses herself before Regan graciously talks with her.

And that’s the last thing she remembers—until she wakes up in a strange room with a splitting headache. She’s been kidnapped. And what she discovers will change everything she believed about her husband’s death . . . her career . . . and her faith.

Review:

To quote TBCN’s Novel Reviews reviewer, Nora St.Laurent this novel gives readers a close look inside the writer’s world. Although, thankfully, most of us do not go around kidnapping negative reviewers. 😉

This was the first novel I’ve read by Rene Gutteridge, and I’m hooked. The story gripped me without release, often keeping me up well into the night, until I reached the very satisfying end.

Jules Belleno, a talented writer who appears to have little drive for anything but blogging, eating, and sleeping, experiences a terrifying adventure that rocks her to her core, and in doing so, awakens the part of her she’s suppressed for way too long. Captured by an author she once greatly admired, she’s forced to find inner strength and a reason to go on. Held hostage in a secret, remote cabin barricaded in by trees and brutal cold, her fear of death stirs within her a desire to live.

This novel is one of the most captivating, disturbing, hope-infusing stories I’ve read. Ever. There were times my fingertips literally grew sweaty, my stomach churned, and my pulse raced as I wondered if this poor, broken girl would survive. As to Patrick Reagan, the literary genius turned kidnapper, I held as much fear of him and empathy for him as Jules did. Was he crazy? If not crazy yet, would he become it before the novels end? And yet, having experienced with him the death of his wife, could I blame him if he did lose his sanity?

In Misery Loves Company, Ms. Gutteridge masterfully created a villain I couldn’t hate and a “victim” I admired. Needless to say, I am now a committed Gutteridge fan!